Seeking Advice (Living Your Life With Dr Abdulfattah Adeyemi)
Some of us would not be where we are today if not for people who offered us advice at every stage of our lives. It is a great opportunity to have received advice from our families, friends, colleagues, mentors, and experts.
From their knowledge, wisdom and experiences, these have offered us valuable suggestions and insights towards success in our relationships, careers, financial matters, health issues, legal concerns or spiritual journeys.
With their advice, so many failures have been avoided and so many disappointments have been averted. We are able to objectively determine our growth and progress in life, as their opinions helped shed more lights on the dark areas of our thoughts. Where we would have fallen, their counsels kept us standing, and where we would have ran into dangers, their warnings beckoned us to safety.
Wise counsels have freed us from paralyzing fears, agonizing anxieties and overwhelming burdens. We can now face our future with confidence and positive outcomes in view. Even as we progress in our pursuits, our advisers bring out the best in us as they cheer us on with validation and encouragement. We should therefore, appreciate the value of their golden advice: more precious than gold itself.
Having said these, there are some points we need to note if we would benefit from good advice. When seeking guidance, we should ensure to keep our conversations clear, specific and well articulated. Those to advice us might not have all the time to listen to many details of the background information, circumstances, situations, settings, etcetera. It is better to limit the information to what is necessary for an ideal response.
Even when we seek counsel of experts, we should focus on the particular issues we need addressed, except when certain details will be required for an objective analysis of the situations at hand. Generally, we should avoid ambiguous questions with double-edged meanings, nefarious motives or demeaning insinuations.
Note that we don’t always have to take all the advice we are given, but when we turn the conversation into a hot argument, or we out-speak our advisers with arrogant and defensive postures, chances are they might just leave us to our stubborn mindsets.
Then, we would have learnt nothing. However, let us not forget that we are responsible for whatever we finally decide to do. Above all, seeking advice should not only be when we are confused, but even when we feel like running with our ideas. We never can tell what better perspectives, broader views, and deeper insights we can learn from those whose opinions we trust and respect. After all, one man’s roof is another man’s floor.
